It’s fitting to see Sam Mills’ face on the cover of a book, seeing as he was the personification of the saying “don’t judge a book by its cover.”
Read more How surfing came to the Jersey Shore
Mills, the Pro Football Hall of Fame member and Long Branch, N.J., native who began his pro career with the USFL Philadelphia Stars, is the subject of a new biography written by former Inquirer and Daily News columnist Paul Domowitch. Just Give Me a Chance To Fail: The Life of NFL Linebacker Sam Mills chronicles the late linebacker’s improbable rise from Long Branch High School and Montclair State to the New Orleans Saints’ “Dome Patrol” defense and the expansion Carolina Panthers, despite being undersized at 5-foot-9.
Domowitch details the impact that Mills made — on and off the field — on the people around him until his death from cancer in 2005. Ahead of the book’s on-sale date on July 28, Domowitch spoke to The Inquirer for a Q&A about Mills’ legacy and the writing process.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
When did you decide that you wanted to write a book about Mills?
When I still worked at The Inquirer, I kind of figured I wanted to write books after I, quote, “retired.” I was going to work till 70 initially. Ended up taking the buyout at 67 and shortly after that, I knew Sam was what I wanted to write about. I had known him since 1983 and his life was just so fascinating. Everybody roots for the underdog, and Sam’s the ultimate underdog. So he was the guy I wanted to write about first. I took the buyout October of 2021. Started on the book, and then ended up doing some freelance for The 33rd Team that took up a lot of my time. So it kind of slowed down the progress on the book. But I kind of started it in earnest again a couple of years ago, and finally finished it.
How important were those years with the Stars in setting up the rest of his pro career?
Without the Stars, I’m not sure he would have had a career because he’d been cut by the Browns. He’d been cut by the [CFL’s Toronto] Argonauts at that point. He was pretty much accepting the fact that he was going to go back to teach and coach some high school football. And … he had to kind of be talked into even going for the tryout with the Stars and then signing a contract with them, so I don’t know that he would have ever gotten another chance without the USFL. He signed with them and was probably, with the possible exception of Reggie White, the best defensive player in that league in the three years he played there. So that probably would have been the end of his career without the USFL. So it was very important to him.
The irony there, which I point out in the book, is Jim Mora, his coach with the Stars and later with the Saints, wanted to cut him the first time he saw him at training camp in Philly because he, like everybody else, refused to believe his eyes that somebody that could be 5-9 could play linebacker in professional football. He finally became convinced, and even then, when he goes to New Orleans and takes the head coaching job there and signs Sam, he’s still not sure he’s going to have an impact in the NFL like he did in the USFL. It wasn’t until he got there in that first practice in a 9-on-7 drill when he just dominated and stoned running backs and got off blocks against guys that were 60, 70 pounds bigger than him that Jim was convinced that he’d survive in the NFL. So without the USFL, I don’t think the guy ever plays pro football.
You got to see him up close in those early days. Did you ever think that he would be able to overcome his height, first at the USFL level, and then ultimately in the NFL, where he built a Hall of Fame career?
It was pretty clear early on in training camp that he was probably the best defensive player they had. The USFL that first year, it was basically a lot of rejects, guys who were on their second and third and fourth chances that had been cut by at least one or two NFL teams. So there were a lot of guys like him. You didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to his size at that point, because I didn’t even know that first year early on what the caliber of the league was going to be. And then as the season went on, you saw both that this was a pretty good league, and that he was a pretty good player. Now, to transfer that and wonder whether he could do that in the NFL, I never doubted he could, because I watched him for two years before that last year when [the Stars] played in [Maryland], and I wasn’t covering them. Size never seemed to be a problem for him. He was able to get under people’s pads. He was the best tackler I’ve ever seen. He was the smartest defensive player I’ve ever covered because he learned early on how to watch film and just knew the game so well that he anticipated what was going to happen and that gave him an advantage that maybe his height might have shortchanged him. So did I think he was going to be a Hall of Famer? I mean, no. Who knows when a guy goes to the NFL, regardless of whether he’s a first-round pick or an undrafted guy like Sam from another league?
But it was pretty quick. After he got to New Orleans, you knew he was going to be a great player in that league. He just took off. [Vic] Fangio was his position coach, and he was surrounded by some pretty good players on that defense in New Orleans the first couple years. But he became their leader, and you just watch them. The one shame there is that they weren’t better offensively in New Orleans. It’s what kind of held that team back the entire time Sam was there. You look at his numbers and the defense’s numbers in the years he played there, and they were a phenomenal defense, but they didn’t have a particularly good quarterback. They had a guy [Bobby Hebert] that was OK, but not good enough to get them over the top. Jim Mora was a very conservative coach. He felt that if you had a good defense and a good running game, that’s all you needed back then. And he found out that wasn’t quite enough and ended up losing all four times they were in the playoffs and in the wild-card round.
You mentioned Fangio, and his career very much mirrored Mills’ career early on. How impactful was Mills on Fangio, and not only his philosophy on linebacker play and what makes a good linebacker, but also as a person, too?
Read more 🏝️ Exploring our islands | Outdoorsy Newsletter
I think he was very impactful on Vic early on in New Orleans, because Vic, he was a year older than Sam. Sam was 27, I think, when he went to New Orleans. Vic’s 28. First time he’s coaching a position after two years as an entry-level coach with the Stars. Sam quickly became the leader of that defense, leader of those linebackers, and he basically let it be known that you need to trust this guy and believe in him. Not that Vic was struggling. Jim [Mora] believed in him, but even [former Saints general manager] Jim Finks had some reservations about whether Vic was ready for that job. Jim [Mora] said he is, and Vic never made him regret it. But Sam believing in Vic, I think, made it easier for [fellow linebackers] Rickey Jackson, Pat Swilling, Vaughan Johnson to also believe in him, and bring that whole unit together. I think after that, Vic’s knowledge of defense and linebackers and understanding of what Sam could do, and the intelligence he brought … I think there’s a quote in the book somewhere in his foreword where [Fangio] says [Mills] was the leader of that team on the field spiritually and schematically, I think is the way he put the quote. So when he understood what Sam meant to that defense, and especially when he got to Carolina, when he was teaching younger guys, Sam was so important to his career after that.
So they were really good for each other, and as you see in the book, he just loved the guy. He has a picture of Sam on his [office] wall ever since Sam died. I gave him a picture a few weeks ago. I dropped by the [Jefferson Health Training] Complex and gave him a picture of him and Sam standing on the sideline. He’s talking to Sam back when he was playing with the Panthers, and I could tell he was really touched to get it. The picture is in the book, but I gave it to him in a frame, and I think it really meant a lot to him, because that’s just how much he loved the guy. He was in Houston when Sam got cancer, and he went up to Carolina a couple times when he was getting chemo during the 20 months after he was diagnosed, and sat with him and spent time with him while he was getting his chemo and after that. He loved him.
A lot of people loved Mills, and you spoke to so many people for the book. But why Fangio? Why did you want Fangio to write the foreword for the book?
For one, he had spent 15 years with the guy. And I knew how close they were. The story, I think it’s in his foreword, about when he was the head coach in Denver. They start out 0-4 that first year, and he puts together a video for the Saturday night meeting before their fifth game about Sam. Video of Sam playing, video of … ‘Keep Pounding’ speech, not the speech itself, but the impact he had, the statue, just all that inspirational stuff that he put together on a team that none of these guys ever played against Sam. It was in 2019. Sam died in 2005. But that’s how important Sam was to him that he even thought to do that.
So the only other guy I thought about for the foreword was Jim Mora, but Jim had presented Sam at the Hall of Fame when he was inducted. I just felt Vic was probably … aside from Jim, there was nobody else I even thought about. I mean, family, guys he played with. There were so many people that he was close to, but Vic just struck a chord, I guess maybe because he also happened to be coaching in Philly, and I knew him pretty well. All the pieces kind of fell together.
You mentioned the Pro Football Hall of Fame. You’re a voter and you were there for those meetings, notably the one in 2022 where he ultimately got voted in. What were those meetings like, and what really put him over the top at the buzzer?
It was his third year as a finalist. The previous two years, I think I put this in the book, he never even made the reduction vote from 15 to 10. He was eliminated quickly both times. And you get to that last year, I didn’t have a sense for what was going to happen. I couldn’t tell you I was optimistic because it didn’t seem like the rest of the people in the room were hearing what we were saying when we would talk about him. I think the fact that it was his last year was what ultimately rang a bell with people. They realized there was myself and [reporter] Jeff Duncan from New Orleans and Darin Gantt from the Panthers website who spoke up for him. Then some other people that followed after that. It just seemed like everybody realized this was his last chance, because if he became a senior candidate, you can wait forever and never get in. And so when he made it from 15 to 10, I just had a feeling, and then when he made it from 10 to five, and went in on the yes-no vote, it was just really gratifying because there aren’t too many guys that wait that long and get in.
What lessons do you hope people take away from reading about Mills?
As much as this book is about him as a football player, him as a person, I think I mentioned in the book, no one that I interviewed had a bad word to say about this guy. The way he lived his life, when you consider what he went through, there was a lot of reasons along the way for him to be bitter, starting with the fact that nobody believed he could play football, to the fact that he’s diagnosed with this incurable cancer at an age when he’s just starting his coaching career and probably would have been a head coach very quickly.
And he was never bitter. He was just kind of like, “OK, this is just something else I have to deal with,” and he knew he wasn’t going to beat it, but he wasn’t going to surrender. He never took pity on himself the entire time, right up till the time he died. Even when it became clear to him that time was running out, he’s planning his funeral. He’s planning the menu for his funeral. He’s getting the speakers. He’s saying his goodbyes to longtime friends. That’s the kind of stuff that you just don’t see. People that read this book, I hope, look at it beyond football and see a guy that they should emulate as a person, as well as everything else that he overcame.
Read more CDC expands largest known U.S. cyclospora outbreak to 9 states, including Pennsylvania